Star Tech Journal

Issue: 1989-August - Vol 11 Issue 6

(
SI'AR*TECH Journal·
Aagust.i 989 Y
)
Sega Power Drift Throttle Gear
Evan Wessel
Mercury Amusements
Havertown, Pennsylvania
On or clean the monitor screen on a Super
Hang On. How about the junk joysticks and
buttons used on Quartet. Shall I continue?
PROBLEM
I'm in the process of changing a worn nylon
gear in Sega's Power Drift throttle. This is a
nightmare! I've been struggling with taking
this assembly apart for the last hour with no
success. Seeing that it's a nylon-on-metal
gear system, I may have to go through this
again soon. Arrgh!
FACTORY RESPONSE
Dari Davidson, Customer Service Manager
Sega USA
San Jose, California
OBSERVATIONS
It's the nylon gear on Power Drift that is the
culprit. It is connected to a metal gear on the
throttle pot and didn't take too long to lose
it's teeth. I think it's best to use all plastic or
all metal; otherwise great wear and tear may
result.
COMMENTS
The biggest complaint I have is the time and
aggravation required to change the darn
thing. Typical "Sega" engineering, I hate to
say. Try changing a throttle cable on a Hang
Evan:
I have checked the parts sales on this gear
and it has not been out of line. We use the
same gear on Power Drift, Turbo Outrun and
also on our new driving game. This gear can
be replaced very quickly on Turbo and the
new game. Power Drift used the Out Run
control panel and the new games use the
Turbo-Outrun design which should be simple
to service.
~
Sega has been known for its innovative
controls. This has made the difference on
some games. Sega did not reuse the Quartet
buttons and, in fact, any button would work
on that game. Please understand it takes
time to feed input back to engineering for
improvement.
Atari Asteroids Monochroine X-Y Monitor
Problein & Solution
Matt J. Mccullar
Forum Fair Arcade
Arlington, Texas
This is one of the weirdest problems I ever
faced. It consisted of a monitor for an Aster-
oids game. Although it took several days to
find, I'll concentrate it here.
The problem: no picture on the screen. High
voltage was present, but the heater did not
light up. This kind of monitor has separate
power supplies for heater and high voltage,
so I checked the 3-amp, slo-blo fuse in the
transformer-heater circuit. Removing the
fuse and using the continuity function on
my DVM, the fuse looked good. The heater
inside the neck of the CRT had not opened
up and was also good. With no fuse in the
circuit I got 6.3 volts A.C. from the trans-
former, which was normal. But every time I ~
reconnected everything, the voltage to the
heater dropped to about 3 volts. I checked all
the wiring and it was good.
I did run across one interesting thing: the
coin door lamps use the 6.3 VAC to light up,
and their sockets appeared a bit faulty so I
cut their wires and took them out of the
circuit. But that did not help light up the
picture tube's heater.
I finally got a break a few days later when the
heater fuse blew. When I replaced it, the
heater came on! What happened? I con-
cluded that the fuse's internal resistance
had slowly increased, thereby dropping the
voltage across it. Instead of blowing the way
it should have, this one just slowly weak-
ened. I didn't notice this before because the
beeper-continuity function on my DVM
turns on the beeper when it finds anything
under 30 ohms across the meter leads.
Ideally, a fuse should be very close to zero
ohms (although some fuses with very small
current ratings are about 10 ohms), but this
one had apparently slowly increased to sev-
eral times what it should have been. Since its
overall resistance had not yet gone over 30
ohms, however, the beeper on my meter
turned on and I assumed the fuse was good.
So now, when I check a fuse, I don't use the
continuity test and instead get a direct resis-
tance measurement.
My dad is a retired engineer from a Texas
electric power company and I asked him ifhe
ever ran across a fuse doing this. he said an
electrical substation in west Texas got
knocked out for a while because a fuse
developed a cold solder joint inside one of the
endcaps and increased its resistance. But
since it wasn't visible, no one caught it by
just looking at it. He also says that the same
thing can happen in circuit breakers.
Steering Wheel
"Shifter"
HAPP CONTROLS Manufacturer and Distributor of Game Controls
106 Garlisch Avenue• Elk Grove Village, IL 60007
Phone: 312/593-6130 • Telex: 297-249Ur • Fax: 312/593-6137

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